


we're only watching the skies

by ladililn



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 00:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladililn/pseuds/ladililn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry walks into his bedroom and sees a boy lounging on his window seat. The boy is older, maybe around fourteen judging by Harry’s friend Haydn’s older brother who’s also fourteen, and he’s got artfully swept-about hair and quick fingers, tapping out a rhythmic <i>dahdahdahdah</i> pattern on the windowsill.</p><p>Peter Pan AU, because of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we're only watching the skies

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction. I neither own One Direction nor am I J.M. Barrie, although I borrow some of his words. Title from _Forever Young_ , naturally.

_How can I describe Peter’s face, the pieces of him that stick to my heart? Peter sometimes looked aloof and distant; sometimes his face was open and soft as a bruise. Sometimes he looked completely at Tiger Lily, as if she were the point on which all the universe revolved, as if she were the biggest mystery of life, or as if she were a flame and he couldn’t not look even though he was scared. And sometimes it would all disappear into carelessness, confidence, amusement, as if he didn’t need anyone or anything on this earth to feel happy and alive._

_—_ J.M. Barrie, _Peter Pan_

 

Harry walks into his bedroom and sees a boy lounging on his window seat.  The boy is older, maybe around fourteen judging by Harry’s friend Haydn’s older brother who’s also fourteen, and he’s got artfully swept-about hair and quick fingers, tapping out a rhythmic _dahdahdahdah_ pattern on the windowsill.  He doesn’t look at Harry when he walks in, even when Harry stops dead and stares at him.

“What are you doing?” Harry says after several long moments of no one speaking when it really feels like someone should, to explain themselves or apologize or yell for help.

The boy looks at him for the first time and smiles, quick as his fingers.

“Sitting,” he says easily.  “Relaxing.  You’ve got a very pleasant view out here.”

“Have you been here before?” Harry asks, because it’s actually too dark to see anything now.  “No, hang on, who are you?”

“Who are _you_?” the boy counters.

“I’m Harry,” Harry says, because that’s obvious, he is who he is because it’s his house and he’s the one who’s supposed to be here.  “What are you doing in my room?”

“I just said, Harry, I’m admiring the view.  Haven’t you ever just sat and admired the view?”

“Only during the day.”

The boy looks at him with wide, surprised eyes.

“Never even once the night?  How long have you been looking?”

“I’m eleven,” Harry says, not sure if that answers the question.  “How old are you?”

The boy looks affronted.  “I’m not.”

“What’s your name?”

“Don’t have one.”

“You do too.”

“You have to guess.”

“I don’t want to.”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun.  I’ll give you three guesses.”

Harry stares at him a bit.  He’s still not sure what the boy is doing in his house, but finding out his name has got to help in the eventual getting-him-to-leave process.  He screws up his face to think, trying to bring to mind the most common names he knows.

“Christopher?”

The boy makes a face.  “No.”

“There are three Christophers in my class at school.”

“Well not me.”

“It was just a guess,” Harry says, cross.  He thinks again.  Maybe this boy wouldn’t have a popular name at all, because he’s so strange.  At least, Harry thinks he’s strange, because why else would he show up unexplained in Harry’s bedroom on a school night?

“Hurry up then.”

“Is it Bainbridge?”

“ _Bainbridge_?”  The boy repeats the name like it’s a smelly sock he’s holding at arm’s length.  “Is that even a name?”

“Yes,” Harry says defensively.  “We read a story in school about a boy called Bainbridge.  He could do magic and things.  I liked it.”

The boy snorts, apparently unimpressed.

“Probably not _real_ magic though.”

“Of course not real magic.  It was just a story.  How many guesses have I got left?”

“Two.”

Harry thinks.  Yesterday his mother lost her mobile phone and tore the house apart to find it, which she hadn’t managed until twenty minutes later when it rang in her pocket.  “It’s always the least and most likely answer,” she’d sighed.  It hadn’t made much sense to Harry then, but he’s a day older so maybe he’ll get it now.  He tries to think of the least and most likely answer as though they are the same.

“Harry,” he says, the flash of inspiration hitting him like the sudden slam of a car door.  “Your name is Harry too!”

“Don’t be daft,” the boy says, and Harry deflates.  “There you are, you’ve used up all your guesses.”

“But you told me I had two left!”

“You must have counted wrong then.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Harry says, stubborn.  “ _You_ said it.  I want another guess.”

“Well you’re not getting one.”

“Fine.  Then I won’t call you anything.  I can’t talk to you if you don’t have a name.”

Harry means it, and to prove that he does, he makes a great show of crossing the room to his dresser and opening his sock drawer, passing right by the window seat without even acknowledging the boy’s presence.  This tactic always works on Gemma, who will get so frustrated after an hour or two of the silent treatment that she’ll start screaming at him and throwing things and then she’ll be the one to get in trouble and he didn’t really have to do anything at all.

It works much faster on the boy, though; Harry has only just pulled out a single sock and started rooting around for its match when the boy falls back against the creaky windowpane with an exaggerated huff of surrender.

“Alright _fine_ , you can have another guess,” he says.  He rolls his eyes like it’s some massive burden, allowing Harry this.  “One more, that’s it, no more after that.  But you can have one.”

“And you promise you’ll tell me what it is if I can’t guess?” Harry asks, not quite believing it’s actually that easy.  He abandons the pretense of getting socks and sits down on his bed, drawing his knees up to his chest, staring at the boy as though he could pull an answer right out of his mouth.

“Promise.  Scout’s honor.”  The boy grins wickedly in the moonlight.

“Okay,” Harry says, a pleasant tug in his stomach at having got his way.  “Is it…”  This time he doesn’t try a strategy, just looks at the boy and looks at him and looks at him, at his odd disarray of hair and razor-sharp jawline and bright eyes shining out of the darkness.  He reaches into that darkness with his mind and examines every inch of the boy’s body for the truth, that ineffable secret hiding in the crease of his elbow, the quirk of his lips, the crinkles at the edges of his eyes.  Harry looks at him and imagines he’s becoming wise.

“Peter,” he says, like a decision.

The boy bounces on his hands, smiles big and beautiful.

“That’s close!” he crows.  “That’s really really close!  You almost got it!”

“So what is it?” Harry says, happiness swelling up in him like a balloon.

“Louis.”

The boy springs up and walks to Harry’s sock drawer to bang it shut.

“Barefoot is better,” he says.  “Or really good footie pajamas.”

“Why are you in my room?” Harry asks again.  He wonders if he should feel scared, or apprehensive, or maybe just annoyed.  Mostly he feels curious.

“I’m on holiday,” Louis answers.  “Holiday from my holiday.  Double holiday.  All the freedom I want.”

“Oh,” says Harry, instantly jealous.  “We don’t have winter hols for another two months.  You’re lucky.”

“’Course I’m lucky.  I’m the king of the lucky.  The lucky and the lost.  Do you have any chocolate cake?”

“I don’t think so.”  Harry feels thrown around, caught in Louis’ words like a hurricane.  “We have ice cream though.  But just vanilla.”

“There’s no point in ice cream if it’s just vanilla,” Louis says, but he doesn’t seem too put out.  “Maybe I should go see someone who has cake.”

“Oh,” says Harry again.  He’s not sure if he’s supposed to be relieved or disappointed, so he goes with being both.  “Ed might have some.  He lives across the street and it was his sister’s birthday yesterday.  I know they had cake but I’m not sure if it was chocolate.”

“What sort of birthday?”

Harry doesn’t understand the question.  “Sixteenth, I think,” he says, uncertainly.  “She’s much older.”

Louis shudders.  “Too old,” he says.  “Wrong wrong wrong.  Don’t age at all, young Harold!  Stay young forever.  That’s my advice.  That’s how I’ve done it and I’m just brilliant.  Everything’s all chocolate cake and holiday, that’s me, all the time.”

Harry’s not entirely sure he’d like holiday _all_ the time, or else how would he ever get to see his friends who lived far away if not at school?  Anyway he wants to grow up, wants to be allowed to go places on his own like Gemma or drive a car like Ed’s sister or do all the other fun things that older kids are allowed to do that he isn’t even allowed to know about yet.  He doesn’t say this to Louis, though, because Louis silhouetted in the moonlight looks wild and regal and maybe half right.

“Well, I’d better go,” Louis says completely without pretext.  “Time won’t wait forever, so the story goes.  Tick-tock.  We’ll see.”

He drops the sock he’d somehow ended up holding on the floor and crosses back to the window.  It doesn’t squeak at all as he opens it, just as the floorboards don’t creak when he crosses them.  He’s got one leg outside when Harry comes to his senses.

“Wait!” he cries, too loud.  He hopes he doesn’t wake Gemma; he just knows she’d make a great deal of fuss about Harry having some strange boy in his room unexplained.  “We’re on the second floor,” he points out.

Louis grins.  “It’s okay, I don’t mind.  First floors are so boring.”

It’s not an actual response to Harry’s concern, but Harry can think of no retort, watching helplessly as Louis draws his other leg over the sill, perched out of Harry’s window like a bird about to stretch its wings.

“Wait,” Harry says again, then looks wildly around his room.  “Um.  Here!”

He grabs a paper and pen from his bedside table and scribbles quickly.  He approaches the window, holding the paper out ahead of him like he might hold bread out to a pigeon, hoping to lure it just a little bit closer.

“It’s my number,” he says, suddenly and inexplicably blushing.  “Well, it’s our landline, actually, I don’t have a mobile yet and my stepdad only uses his for work, so we still have one.  A landline, I mean.  So you can call me, if you’re ever on holiday again, or something.”

Louis takes the paper, looks at it like it’s some alien thing.  But then he smiles and looks at Harry like he’s known him all his life.

“I’m always on holiday,” he says.  Harry opens his mouth to ask him what that means, but: “Your sock is moving.”

Harry whips around; his sock is still on the floor, resolutely not moving an inch, not even stirring in the faint breeze from the open window—and then he turns back to the window and Louis is gone, disappeared into the night, a bird after all.

Harry sleeps barefoot and dreams of chocolate cake, and in the morning his mother comes in and scolds him for leaving the window open and letting in the late night rain.

 

Harry stomps up to his bedroom and slams the door shut.  It’s not technically a smart thing to do, as he’s supposed to be long past the little kid stage of stomping around and throwing tantrums, but not quite to the teenager stage of slamming doors and yelling down insults laced with secret self-loathing.  But it’s also his birthday, so he can do what he wants.

At least that’s what he thinks, thoughts twisting inside him like venom, until he hears a voice behind him cry “Oi!” and nearly jumps out of his skin.

“What’d you do that for?” Louis says, because yes, that is definitely him.  Louis always-on-holiday, Louis hater-of-socks, Louis shows-up-in-your-bedroom-one-night-and-then-never-shows-up-again.  Except not anymore on the last one, apparently.

“Which part?” Harry says, only because he can’t think of anything else to say.  “The stomping or the slamming?”

“The storming.  What’s gotten into you, Curly?”

“What’s gotten into _you_?” Harry says crossly, as a defense.  “Who are you, anyway?  Why are you here?  Again?  On another holiday or something?”

“I’m always on holiday.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Harry takes a deep breath and looks at him, really looks at him for the first time now that the shock has (again) worn off.  He doesn’t look any older than he had last year, which maybe shouldn’t be surprising, because it’s actually only been three-and-a-half months, but Harry is still young and when you’re young time moves differently, slower.  Still, Harry thinks he himself looks older than he did three-and-a-half months ago, and Louis doesn’t seem to have aged a day.  He thinks Louis might even be wearing the same clothes but then realizes he doesn’t have any idea what Louis was wearing last time.  He should pay attention this time so if he ever sees him again, he’ll know if Louis is a time traveler.  Louis is standing in the middle of the floor with his hands on his hips like a surveyor appraising the lay of Harry’s bedroom, and Harry is standing in front of his door holding a plate with a piece of birthday cake on it.

“Oh!”  He looks down at it and back up at Louis and down again.  He holds out the plate.  “Chocolate cake,” he says, with just a hint of pride at the luck of it.

Louis just stares.  The seconds tick past.

“Well?” Harry tries.

“Well what?”

“You said you liked it last time,” says Harry, confused.

“Did I?”  Louis looks genuinely and politely puzzled.  “Can’t remember that at all.  Ah well.  Bygones under the bridge.  Don’t give it another thought, Curly.”

“My name’s _Harry_.”

“Harry.  Curly.  Curly Harry.  Curly hair.”  All at once Louis begins to laugh, a delighted sound, a sunlit sound, spilling out of him lighter than air.  Harry smiles because he can’t help it.

He catches sight of them both in the window, bright and sharp, reflection painting over the darkening sky like they can keep the night at bay with chocolate cake and laughter.  But the window is half-open, letting in a gnawing chill, and he knows he hadn’t left it that way when he went downstairs.  He bites back the question that he knows won’t be answered.

“What are you doing?” he says instead, sinking cross-legged to the floor and setting the chocolate cake beside him.  Maybe he can riddle some meaning out of Louis’ cryptic answers, read between the lines like some great sleuth, like Sherlock Holmes or Bainbridge the magic boy.

“I’ve lost my shadow.”

Harry blinks up at him.

“Your what, sorry?”

“My shadow.  I’ve lost it.  As soon as I came in this room it got up and dashed away from me.  Probably has some evil ulterior motive.  Maybe it wants to build a life of its own.  Start a family.  A family of shadow-demons, following my every footstep.  Lurking.  You know.  In my peripherals.  And around my front, just to be cheeky.”

“Or maybe it just wants freedom,” Harry offers, playing along like losing your shadow is a valid thing to have happen to you.

“What from?  Holidays all the time, holidays and chocolate cake?”

Louis doesn’t so much drop to the ground as collapse downwards, landing in an artful heap of tousled hair and long limbs and pitiful sighing.  He disentangles himself from himself just enough to drag Harry’s plate towards him and mournfully feed himself a piece of icing.

“It’s like losing an old friend,” Louis says, while he licks Harry’s fork.  Harry thinks he might actually be crazy but he feels a stab of empathy anyway, slicing through him quick like a knife.

“Where have you tried looking?” he asks.

“Since I flew in?”

“…Sure.”

“Everywhere, I think.  Under the bed.  In the closet.  In your sock drawer.  Out the door.”

“Which door?”

“The one my shadow wasn’t in.”

“Oh.”  Harry looks around.  “I can’t see my shadow either,” he confesses.

Louis smiles as though he expected as much all along.

“Maybe your shadow and my shadow are off having adventures together,” Harry suggests.

“Here?”  Louis sounds derisive.  “How do you have adventures in a place like this?  It’s all clocks and quiet and…hatlessness.”

“You can do stuff here,” Harry says.  “Like…swimming and stuff.  Or hanging out at the shopping center.  Or playing football in the park.  Or birthday parties.”  Except the last part comes out bitter, tastes ugly on his tongue and there it goes, polluting the air.  Harry stares down at his hands and not at Louis’ face.

“Is it your birthday?” Louis asks.

Harry nods, throat tight.

“Which one?”

“Twelve.”

Louis is silent; when Harry looks up, he looks a bit puzzled, as if he’s trying to do long division in his head.

“It’s still pretty young,” Harry says, like he has to explain himself.

Louis nods, easily convinced.  “Not too bad yet then,” he says.

Harry remembers the advice Louis gave him, never to age another day.  He wants to get at least as old as Louis.  He doesn’t realize he’s said as much out loud until Louis grins suddenly, pleased and triumphant, Cheshire Cat from ear to ear.

“Curly Harry, you can never be as old as me and you can never be as young, but I will give you the same number of birthdays as guesses.  Three.  Or four.  I don’t remember.  Didn’t you guess it, in the end?  My name?”

“No,” Harry says.  He swallows.  “What happens after three or four birthdays?”

Louis stares at him, stares through him.  His fingers are tapping out quick patterns again, _ratattattat_ on the wooden floor.

“The boys never got so many guesses,” he says.  “They were all bad at the game anyway.”

“What boys?”

“The lost ones.  Remember?  I told you before.  Lost and lucky.  Nefarious, too.  They’re all very fanciful, my boys.  Full of whimsy and whistling and wind in the willows and whatnot.  We go on adventures.”

“What sort of adventures?”  Harry wonders if he’s asking too many questions but he doesn’t really care.  He feels out of breath and full of potential.

“Wild ones.  Fun ones.  With pirates and mermaids and warriors.  They never end, not ever, and no one is ever left alone.”

Harry leans forward.

“Why did you leave there then?”

A wrinkle crosses Louis’ brow, as though that thought has not occurred to him.

“I’m on holiday,” he says slowly.  “Why did _you_ leave?”

“I wasn’t ever there.”

Louis looks at him, fragile and helpless, and all of a sudden Harry knows what to do.  He leaps to his feet, crosses the room and shuts off the light.

It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust, but when they do, it’s like he can see all the clearer.  The night has been let in, the moonlight reaching its long fingers through the window and groping at the floor, trying to capture something.  All it gets is floor and the window seat and one clawed foot of Harry’s bed, and Louis.  The moonlight envelops Louis and finds his shadow, casts it long and dark in front of him over the floorboards.

“There you go,” Harry says, triumphant.  He sits back down on the floor, a little closer, so the moonlight just grips his knees and Louis’ shadow stops right in front of him.  He can’t see the look on Louis’ face at all, just once again his bright bright eyes, illuminated by god-knows-what.

“Thank you,” Louis says quietly.  He reaches his hand out to ruffle Harry’s curls, but it’s slow, like a caress.  Harry really wishes he could see his face.

“What about yours?” Louis says.

Harry smiles.

“I don’t mind being without it for a little longer,” he says.  “I never realized before how annoying it is, having something follow you around all the time like that.”

Louis throws his head back and laughs, and the moonlight catches on his throat and lays it bare.

“Everything follows me,” he says.  “Shadows and boys and crocodiles that’ve swallowed pocket watches.  Even a fairy, sometimes.  When she wants to.”

“What’s her name?” Harry asks.

“Eleanor.”

Suddenly Harry thinks he doesn’t want to know any more names.

“Tell me about the mermaids,” he says instead.

So Louis does, tells him about playing in the lagoon and fighting sea monsters, and crawling out of the water onto a rock when his fingers start getting pruney (except the rock turns out to be a giant sea turtle and it takes him underneath a waterfall and he loses at hide-and-go-seek).  Harry listens and doesn’t think about whether it’s real, whether it’s all just some made-up story or if there really is some wild fantastical place where gnomes will steal your shoes if you’re not careful and nobody ever gets older.  He sits still as the moonlight creeps slowly away from him, seeping back towards the window and into the night, and Louis’ words wash over him like the sun.

He’s twelve now, and it’s been an exhausting day, fun and exhilarating at first and then bitter and angry, and at last strangely wonderful—but long and tiring overall, and at some point Harry falls asleep.  He can’t remember how long Louis had been talking or what he’d been talking about when Harry drifted off, but he knows Louis’ voice was like a lullaby, spinning epic tales even in his dreams.  He wakes up in the morning with a stiff crick in his neck from lying at an awkward angle on the wooden floor, but the sun is spreading his shadow out behind him and the cake is gone, the plate licked clean, the fork disappeared entirely.  The window is shut so Harry opens it and breathes in freedom, thinks, _This is what being twelve feels like_.  It doesn’t feel wrong exactly, but it doesn’t feel how he expected.

 

Harry insists his mother teach him how to bake, and from then on there is always, always chocolate cake in the house.  His family gets sick of it after about two weeks but luckily any and all of Harry’s friends are always willing to come over and have a piece.  Harry discovers he quite likes baking, likes the simplicity and the satisfaction of it, so once he’s perfected cake he starts expanding his repertoire: cookies and brownies and a couple of disastrous caved-in pies before he gets the technique quite right.  His mother says _You should get a job in a bakery_ and his stepfather says _You should open your own bakery_ and his sister says _He shouldn’t do anything, he’s only twelve_.

He doesn’t tell them that he’s only really interested in baking for one person, because he hasn’t told them about Louis.  It seems like maybe the sort of thing you ought to tell your parents, a strangely unaging older boy sneaking in and out of your second-story window at random intervals and odd hours of the night, but it never feels _dangerous._ He doesn’t know how he knows, he just knows.  Harry can’t even begin to imagine explaining Louis to his parents.  Louis doesn’t quite seem to belong to the real world, the daylight world of stop signs and _EastEnders_ marathons and being late for biology class.  He exists somewhere in the shadow realm, the twilight hours, and Harry doesn’t want to drag him into the harsh bright day by saying his name aloud.  He thinks he’s keeping Louis pressed close to his chest like a secret, but really it’s more like a dream.

The problem with dreams is that you can never make them reoccur when you want to, and Louis is just the same: no matter how many cakes or pies or cookies Harry bakes his room remains empty and shadowless night after night after night.  Harry doesn’t _dwell_ , really.  He spends his days going to school and his weekends playing football at the park with his friends, and sometimes he hangs around watching TV on the sofa while throwing popcorn at Gemma or goes to the shopping center with Ed to wander around and spend all his allowance in the food court.  His teachers all say he’s attentive and engaged; his parents rarely worry over him.  Sometimes he hears noises in the night as he lies in bed and doesn’t think of Louis at all.

Of course, it’s always the last thing you expect and the most obvious thing to happen, which is why the next time Louis shows up Harry hasn’t baked anything in weeks and has spent all day concerned with things he thinks Louis would probably hate: the beginning of a new semester at school and whether or not his parents think he’s old enough to be allowed to go on a trip to Cardiff with Ed’s family.  Harry walks into his room and there he is, like clockwork.  This time Louis is sprawled out magnificently on Harry’s bed, like he owns it, like he lives there, and for one long second Harry believes it.  Louis whips his head around at Harry’s entrance, grinning blindingly as though Harry is somehow just on time.

“Come sit,” Louis says, patting the comforter next to him.  Harry closes the door and drops his backpack on the floor and climbs on.  He feels a bit awkward, sitting cross-legged on his own bed with his back ramrod straight, not quite sure how to occupy this shared space.  Louis lies back against Harry’s pillows and lets out a contented sigh.  He smiles lazily at Harry as though they do this all the time.

“Why do you only ever come at night?” Harry asks instead of all the things he wants to.  He’s always asking questions but never the right ones.

“You can’t see the stars during the day,” Louis says.  Harry must be going crazy because that actually sounds reasonable.

Louis stretches his arms back and grabs Harry’s headboard, and Harry catches a glimpse of the bare skin of his stomach, smooth and taught, and his own stomach flips unexpectedly.

“Do you want to learn how to fly?” Louis asks casually.

“Um,” Harry says.  Answering questions is harder than asking them where Louis is involved, because he’s not entirely sure what sort of reality they’re operating in.

“I can teach you,” Louis offers.

“Well,” says Harry.  Louis props himself up on his elbows.

“I can teach you right now, if you like.”

“I don’t think,” Harry says.  He tries to swallow and ends up coughing.  “Maybe not in here?  I don’t want to wake up my parents.”

The thing is.  The thing is that Harry _wants_ him to.  The thing is that he looks at Louis, the lithe limber reality of him, the impish grin and the hair that he thinks might look almost bronze if he ever saw it in daylight, and he can believe anything Louis tells him.  He can believe that Louis can fly and lose his shadow and have adventures with mermaids and instead of sounding crazy it sounds more real than anything else he knows.  But he’s terrified of being wrong.  Because what if Louis is a fraud, what if he isn’t magic like Bainbridge or a time traveler like the Doctor, what if he’s just some strange boy who comes into Harry’s room during the night and stares at him with eyes too bright and too full to hold any secrets but his own.  What if he’s real, what if he’s not; the penny is hovering in the air, the knife is quivering on its edge and Harry doesn’t ever want to know the answers.  The possibilities are so much better when they’re infinite.

He seems so real, though, here on Harry’s bed, close enough to touch, but Harry doesn’t dare.

“What else can you teach me?” he asks instead.  Louis looks confused.

“I can fight and I can fly,” he says.  He bites his lip.  “What else is there?”

“Okay,” Harry says.  “That’s okay.  I can teach you something instead.  We don’t have to do either of those things, not today.  I can teach you to…sing.”

“I know how to sing!” Louis says indignantly.  “I do it all the time.”  
“Let’s hear it then.”

“I don’t sing _out loud_.”

“Oh,” Harry says. “Well, I do.  I’m in the choir at school.  We’re not that good, but we have concerts and stuff.”

Louis looks at him blankly, and Harry is seized by a random and desperate desire to _do_ something, to impress Louis in some way, to entertain him.  He casts about wildly for an idea, and remembers the first night Louis came to his room, the first time they met.

“We could play a guessing game.  I could sing a verse and you can try and guess what song it is.”

“Okay,” Louis agrees easily.

Harry clears his throat, but for some reason he doesn’t feel nervous like he usually does at school.  He sings softly, low, his voice still wavering a little on the high notes, not really developed.  He’s only twelve so there’s still a ways to go.  He sings _O Come, All Ye Faithful_ , because that’s what he best remembers from last year’s Christmas recital.

Louis stays quiet as Harry sings, not even swaying an inch, which is strange for someone who seems to move so much.  After a while looking at Louis feels too overwhelming, makes his skin itch in a strange and tingly way, so for the rest of the song Harry focuses his eyes on the nightlight plugged into the wall next to his bed, the one that he hasn’t turned on since he was eight.  He wonders if it still works.

“I like that one,” Louis says when Harry finishes.  He’s lively again, tilting his head back to contemplate the secrets in the ceiling paint, shifting against the pillows so he’s mostly lying down.  “It makes me think of …peaches and rainstorms and sleeping hammocks.”

Harry doesn’t see how Louis got peaches and rainstorms and sleeping hammocks from a song about angels and baby Jesus, but he doesn’t question it.

“So what’s it called?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Louis says, blinking at him.  “Do I get three guesses?”

“Only one,” Harry says, heartlessly.

“Why only one?”

“It’s my game.  I get to decide the rules.”

“Hmm,” says Louis doubtfully.

“Go on, just guess something.”

“Sing it again, I’ve forgotten.”

“You have not,” Harry says.  He hums a verse anyway.  Louis stares at his lips as though they hold all the answers.

“It’s called Peaches and Rainstorms,” he decides.

“You’re worse at this sort of game than I am,” Harry laughs.  “You can’t do this at all.”

“I can fight and I can fly,” Louis repeats, softly.

“And you’re always on holiday?”

Louis looks at him and smiles.

“I can fight and I can fly, and you, Curly Harry, can sing.”

He reaches his hand out across the ocean of bedspread between them and slides just his fingertips over Harry’s open palm, idle and important at the same time.  Harry stares at him, like always, at his mouth quirked up in a small smile and his other hand curling and uncurling over his stomach, absent, restless.  He feels like he can never really get a grasp on Louis when he looks away.  No matter how much he tries to memorize him, memorize this, Louis always needs to be relearned, recataloged.  Like his features are too bright to stay trapped in the mind.  Harry wonders how Louis can stay still at all, when he feels such a bundle of hemmed-in energy, like he should be a shooting star or a firecracker exploding all around the room.  His touch is electricity.  He marvels at Louis contained on his bed, as if Harry’s managed to trap fire, to contain a wild animal.

“I can bake, too,” Harry says, just to have something to say, to cut apart the too-big silence.  “Do you bake?  Do any of your lost boys bake?  I could make cookies right now if you want.  Or cake.  If you still like cake?”

Even as he says it he knows he doesn’t want to.  It feels dangerous to leave this room when it’s the two of them, even for Harry go alone and grab some store-bought cookies from the pantry.  Not while Louis is here.  He might disappear.  He might escape.  Outside this room isn’t safe, outside their haven of moonlight and shadows.  This is their oasis, their safe spot, the place where Louis might still be able to fly.

Louis doesn’t answer for a long time, just looks at him, and says simply: “I like you.”

“I like you too,” Harry says, his breath catching in his throat.  Louis hums in satisfaction.

“Good,” he declares.  “I’m fond of you and that’s all that matters.  I’m fond of all my boys, too, it’s why they get to go on my adventures.  It’s hard to do much if I’m not fond of you.  But who else will be fond of them, my lost boys?  They haven’t got anyone else.  Just me.  It’s like I’ve adopted them.  I can adopt you too.”

“Well,” Harry says, “I think some other people are fond of me too, you know.  My parents and my sister and probably my friends.”

Louis actually looks alarmed.  He sits up on his elbows.

“Don’t they know they can’t be?  Don’t they know I got here first?”

“I think they got here first,” Harry points out, a bit thrown.  “I only met you last year.”

“It’s been ages,” Louis insists, frowning.  “I’m very cross about all of this.  I hope you’ll let them know only I can have you.”

Harry doesn’t quite know what to say to that, or even how to feel.

Louis lies back down with a sigh, like he’s incredibly burdened by the weight of his assumed responsibility.  He nods.  “Okay.  Do you want to hear a story?”

“Yes,” Harry says immediately.

“Then come here.”

Louis cradles Harry’s head against his chest and runs his fingers through Harry’s curls, natural as flying.

“Once upon a time,” he begins.  Harry turns his head to stifle his giggles into Louis’ chest.  Louis pulls absently on his curls and doesn’t notice.  “There was a very naughty fairy, and a very evil pirate…”

This time Harry stays awake, he thinks, throughout the entirety of Louis’ story—the terrifying trouble, the dire straits, the unexpected heroism, the duck and weave.  The final triumph.  It’s a bit hard to tell if he actually _does_ stay awake for all of it because he’s not really sure where dreaming ends anymore, but Harry can feel the steady thrum of Louis’ heartbeat beneath his cheek, and he uses it to mark the passage of time.  When Louis finishes, Harry closes his eyes and thinks of nothing but the _thump thump thump_ , reverberating through his skull like music.  He thinks it’s probably the only aspect of Louis that’s actually predictable.  He focuses so intensely on chronicling the minutes by the beat of Louis’ heart that he loses track of time altogether.  Maybe he really does fall asleep.

Louis gets up off the bed, perhaps to leave.  Harry catches him around the wrist.

“Maybe when I’m older?” he says, his own heart thrumming out a wild rhythm in his chest.  “You can teach me how to fly, if you still want.”

“Go to sleep, Harry,” Louis says gently.  Harry feels instantly annoyed, as any twelve-year-old will at that suggestion.

“I’ll still be here,” Louis says.  Harry wants to ask _when?_ but he doesn’t think it’s a question Louis will understand.

 

Louis doesn’t come again until eleven months later, and when he does he nearly gives Harry a heart attack.

“Hello!” Louis cries, jumping out from behind Harry’s door and grabbing him in some sort of enthusiastic backwards tackle-hug.  Harry lets out a noise halfway between a strangled yelp and an honest shriek.

“It’s Louis,” says Louis, as though Harry might be confused.

“I _know_ ,” Harry says.  He means to sound annoyed but somehow ends up sounding wondering.  Louis is unchanged, like always, all hair eyes teeth moonlight shadow instead of flesh and blood.  Harry drinks up the sight of him like a drowning man.  “Where have you been?”

“I’ve missed your curls,” Louis says, which isn’t an answer at all, but Harry hadn’t really been expecting one.  Louis buries his face in Harry’s hair, then bites his ear, like an afterthought.  Harry yelps again.  Louis grins, whisper-sharp and impish.

“You’re loud,” he says gleefully, and bounds away to curl up on the window seat.  Harry follows without hesitation.

“My parents are away,” he says, dropping onto a cushion and drawing his knees up to his chest.  “And Gemma’s sleeping at a friend’s house, even though I think she’s supposed to be here minding me.  Otherwise somebody might’ve come rushing in to see if I was being kidnapped or something.”

“Lucky me then,” Louis says, still grinning, and nudges Harry’s foot with his own.  Harry smiles at him for no reason in particular.

“Me too,” he says, inanely.

“You look older,” Louis accuses.  Harry shifts, uncomfortable.  He thinks, madly, that Louis’ hair is looking at him suspiciously.

“Thirteen,” Harry confesses.  “And a half,” he adds, in case it matters.  “Mum thinks I’m about to hit a growth spurt.”

“You need one.  Some of my lost boys are taller than you.”

“Tell me their names,” Harry says eagerly.  Louis has told him already, in his stories, but Harry wants to hear again and again and again, a litany he can recite to keep from going sane.  Really, he just wants to hear everything Louis has to tell him.

“Liam,” Louis starts.

“Liam, Niall, Zayn,” Harry cuts in.  “They’re the ones I remember.  Eleanor the fairy.  Simon the pirate.  Danielle the mermaid.”

“Stan,” Louis says, but Harry drives off in another direction.

“I wanted to tell you,” he says, words spilling out uncharacteristically fast, “it happened months ago but you never came—I wrote down that story you told me for a creative writing contest at school, sorry if you mind, I gave you credit and everything—like, I said it was adapted or whatever—and I won first, thought you might want to hear that.  You’re the hero, obviously.  And it’s got all your lost boys in and everything.  My teacher really loved it, she submitted it somewhere to be published, I think.  I mean, I wrote it down the best I could remember.  It was better when you told it though.”

His teachers have always despaired of the weeks and months it seems to take for Harry to get his answers out, but in this moment he is fast and feverish, words he’d been storing up and rearranging in his mind for months and months as he waited for Louis to show again—as he always does, out of the blue, appearing in Harry’s room like a miracle—all tumble out at once, tripping over each other in their haste to escape.  He’s filled with the excited hum of _Louis being here_ , here in his dull life and dreary bedroom like a stained-glass window or a comet.  An anomaly.  The thrill makes his skin buzz, his bones vibrate.  But it’s a double-edged sword: he can’t help but be hyper-aware that each second that ticks by means Louis is that much closer to leaving.  And then the drought starts.  Harry wants to savor each moment, but instead he clings.

Louis is looking at him like he only understood maybe half of all the words Harry just vomited out into the air between them, but he looks pleased all the same.

“What did you call it?” he asks.

“ _Peter and the Lost Boys_ ; I didn’t want to use your real name.”

“I don’t have a real name.”

“Yes you do,” Harry objects, “you told me it after I couldn’t guess.”

“It’s _a_ name, Harry, but that doesn’t mean it _belongs_ to me.  Nothing belongs to me.  Except, of course, everything.”

“Nothing you say ever makes any sense,” Harry tells him.

“Where’s the fun in making sense all the time?”

“Are you still on your double-holiday?” Harry asks then, because two can play this game.

Louis looks unexpectedly and strangely sad.  It’s an odd emotion on him, his usually gleaming eyes dimmed and downcast.  Like a candle being snuffed.  He looks much less like a mischievous enchanted elf king and much more like a fourteen-year-old boy.

“I lost one of my lost boys,” he says.  Harry’s breath catches in his throat.

“Which one?” he asks.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“How?”

“He went away.  Got older.”

Harry looks at him, like he had that first night, when he was only eleven and imagined he could pull secrets from Louis’ body like spun sugar.  Now, though, he doesn’t want to take anything from Louis that Louis doesn’t want to give him.  He wants to comfort Louis instead, assure him that _Harry_ would never do such a wretched thing, wouldn’t put Louis through that, but it would be a lie: he’s getting older every day.  He can see their twin reflections in the window they’re both pressed against, and he looks—almost as old as Louis now.  He’s running short on birthdays.

“Where do you come from?” Harry asks to Louis’ reflection, the question more of a distraction than a genuine plea for the truth.

Louis instantly brightens, almost blindingly so.  The change is so sudden Harry thinks Louis might simply have forgotten the previous thirty seconds of their conversation altogether.

“I’ll show you,” Louis says.

Harry wants to object but something in him won’t allow it.  His voice or his throat or his heart.  His brain seems to have gone all fuzzy, maybe that’s it.

Louis opens the window (still strangely noiseless for him like it still never is for Harry).  He climbs out and sits, his bare feet dangling over empty air—has he always been barefoot? Harry can’t remember—casual, carefree, like a king, like a madman.  He gives Harry a cat burglar grin and reaches back into the room to grab him.  Louis holds Harry’s hand, steadying him, as Harry climbs out, and then doesn’t let go even once he’s settled, threading their fingers together and swinging their clasped hands between them, easy as breathing.  Harry adjusts awkwardly, instinct itching at him to clutch at the window frame or the curtains or _anything_ to anchor him to reality; instead he just grasps tighter at Louis’ hand.  He sucks in a deep breath and closes his eyes—and suddenly remembers he’s not scared of heights.  It’s easy, then, to open his eyes and drink in the inky blackness.  He feels light and weightless, as though if he merely pushed off of the windowsill he really would be able to fly.  He doesn’t, of course.  They kick their legs against the side of the house, and Louis hums a little tune.  _O Come, All Ye Faithful_ ; eleven months have passed since Harry’s shaky rendition and somehow Louis hits every note.  Harry very much hopes nobody is up to look out their window and call the police, or worse, his parents.

“Weren’t you going to show me something?” he asks.

“Hmm?” Louis says.  Harry has a strange and recurring fear that Louis will look away from him one time, look back, and not recognize him at all.

“Where you live,” Harry prompts.

“Oh!  Yes.  Where I come from.  C’mon, Curly, take a look.  Skywards and starwards, darling.”

Harry looks.  He blinks, and slowly the glow of electric streetlights filters away from his vision, so he can see the stars without having to squint.

“There,” Louis points with his free hand.  Irrationally, Harry wants to lunge forward and grab Louis’ arm, keep him from overbalancing and falling.  They’d probably both fall if he did, though—unless Louis really does know how to fly.

Harry follows the trajectory of Louis’ finger into the sky.

“That’s a satellite, I think,” he says.  Louis frowns.

“Not the blinky one, look, easterlyish, two to the _right_ —”

Harry stares and stares and stares and pretends to see what Louis is referring to and nods and exclaims accordingly.  It reminds him of his father’s well-worn story about pretending he can see a baby amidst the static of a sonogram.

“That’s home,” Louis says like a sigh.  It’s not a word Harry has ever heard him use before.  His hand tightens in Louis’ grip, but Louis doesn’t seem to notice.  He almost expects Louis to follow it up with some sort of cliché, _Home is where the heart is_ or _Home sweet home_ , but he doesn’t.

“How do you get there?” Harry asks, even though he thinks he already knows the answer.

“Flying,” Louis says simply.  “Happy thoughts and pixie dust and stars all lined up like little toy soldiers.”

“What do you think about, for your happy thoughts?”

Louis doesn’t answer.  Harry lets it be.

He looks out at his own home, this old familiar street, and barely recognizes it.  All of the daylight mundanity of Harry’s life is cloaked in shadows, hiding from Louis out of respect or shame.  Harry can barely make out the shape of Ed’s house right across the street.  It’s a moonless night, but it doesn’t matter, because Louis is there instead.

“Can you take me there with you?” Harry asks, softly, faint as a twinkling star.

“Maybe someday, if you still want to.”  It’s the most frank answer Louis has ever given him, and maybe it’s no coincidence that his voice seems tinged with sadness.  But the sadness floats up and away over shingled roofs and chimney stacks, carried off by the faint breeze: the open night is too vast and boundless to hold onto any one emotion for very long.

“I’ll want to,” Harry says, sure of it.

“You might be surprised,” Louis says doubtfully, and Harry is seized with irritation that of all people, Louis, to whom he extends every possible benefit of the doubt, doesn’t believe him.

“Why do you come visit me?” Harry asks.  It comes out more snappish then he means it to.  What he _really_ means to say is _do you do this with anyone else_ , but he won’t put that feeling into words.  Anyway, part of him wonders why he hasn’t asked sooner.

“I can’t really stay away,” Louis says.  Harry likes that answer, at least.  It feels honest.

“Me neither,” he says.

He takes a deep breath of almost-fresh air and holds it in as long as he can.  Dawn is still hours and hours away, but part of him wishes it wouldn’t come at all.  He doesn’t want to relinquish his newfound claim on the night.  He wants to pretend the end is just the beginning.

“I should go,” Louis says after a long quiet.

He doesn’t move, but Harry can feel Louis coiled up beside him, ready to spring.  Harry doesn’t want to go back inside yet, but he doesn’t want to watch Louis leave, either.  He’ll close his eyes when the moment comes, he thinks.

“You can’t go _already_ ,” he wants to say.  “Don’t leave me,” he doesn’t say.  “You can’t just do whatever you want all the time, coming and going and not even telling me why or when or how, it’s not fair,” but he keeps it all to himself.

(“I love you,” but that’s ridiculous, he’s only known Louis a few hours.)

“Bye,” Harry says instead.  Louis instantly looks angry.  His hand clenches around Harry’s wrist, hard enough to hurt.

“Don’t say that,” he says harshly.  “Don’t ever say that.  It’s only ever hellos.”

“Hellos and holidays?”  Harry’s voice sounds rough, scratchy to his own ears.

“You’re getting it now,” Louis says, gently brushes his hand across Harry’s forehead.  “I think you’re getting it, Curly.”

Harry doesn’t think he’s getting anything at all but it doesn’t really matter to him, because he can’t quite think of why it should.

 

Someday, Harry thinks, he will go proper camping.  He will sleep out under the stars miles and miles from the furthest outpost of civilization, use flint and steel to start his own fire, and swim naked in cold clear lakes.  Proper camping means fending off bear attacks and getting lost in the woods and returning to one’s real life all filled up with adventurous spirit.  Sleeping in a several-decades-old, slightly smelly, extremely cramped tent in his backyard with five of his best friends is not exactly proper camping, but it is still almost the best way Harry can imagine spending the night of his fourteenth birthday.  Technically early February in Cheshire is far too cold to be sleeping outside, but they are a hardy sort, and it’s infinitely preferable to being constantly hushed inside the house by Harry’s parents or sister.  Out here, they can be as loud and teenage as they want and at least pretend that they’re not being supervised.

Nick is teaching them how to play poker with all the patience of a 999 caller.  He keeps swearing as Harry keeps winning.  Harry grins at him.  He’s allowed to be lucky on his birthday, after all.

“What happened to your cat, Harry?” Hadyn asks, throwing down his third losing hand and gracelessly trying to steer the subject away from all the ribbing he’s getting.  Harry glances around the tent.  For the past three hours that they’ve been “camping,” she has been prowling around, sniffing distrustfully at his friends’ belongings, curling up in the corner, kneading Ed’s stomach.  Now she is gone.

“I guess she went inside,” Harry says.  “We just got the cat flap so she can do it herself.”

“She probably wants to sleep,” Ed says grumpily.  Ed has been wanting to sleep for the past half-hour, even though it’s not even midnight.  He says he has to get up at eight in the morning for guitar lessons.

Harry stands up as much as the low tent ceiling will allow.  “I’d better check she has water and stuff,” he says.  “You can keep playing without me.”

The kitchen, when he enters through the back door, is dark and silent, and the digital clock in the oven display reads 11:49.  He passes Gemma’s room upstairs and hears her talking on the phone, presumably to Georgina or Hannah or her boyfriend whose name he cannot now remember.  Harry heads straight for his room, where his cat usually likes to sleep, curled up on his window seat, so she can sun herself during the day.  The door to his room is open a crack, and light is spilling out of it.  Usually he’s so good at remembering to turn the light off.

His cat is not, in fact, on the window seat—she’s right below it, and she isn’t alone.  She is curled up in Louis’ lap, purring loudly.  Louis has his eyes closed, too, and though he’s not purring Harry thinks he might be asleep as well.

Harry stares and stares as giddiness and panic well up inside him in equal measure, fighting each other for dominance.

Gemma’s laugh, sudden and sharp, knocks him back to reality.  For half a wild second he has the idea of collecting his friends and bringing them upstairs to ask if they can see Louis too, but even if he could get his feet to move, he wouldn’t really do it.  He’s still just standing in the doorway, staring.

“Hey, Harry?”

Gemma pokes her head out of her room, holding the telephone against her collarbone.  Harry whips around and closes his door so quickly it slams.  He tries not to wince.

“Yeah?”

“You guys doing alright out there?  Mum and David went to bed, but you can let me know if you need anything.”  She smiles at him, genuine and sweet.  He suspects it isn’t even special birthday niceness.  He smiles back and his palms sweat.

“Sure, we’re just gonna, um, be in my room for a bit, we’ll try to be quiet, I’ll probably be naked, don’t come in, bye,” Harry says.  He darts into his bedroom, closes the door and lets out a sigh, leaning back against it.  Louis is looking at him, quiet.  He’s scratching the cat between her ears.  For a few long moments they just stare at one another.

“You don’t usually come this late,” Harry says at last, surprising himself with calm words.  “Is this, like, the witching hour or whatever?”  He’d gotten that term from Bainbridge, the magic boy.  He still has the battered paperbacks in his bookcase.

“It’s only twilight,” Louis says simply.  Harry’s not sure what specific part of the situation he was referring to but it doesn’t matter.

“I have friends over,” Harry says, but he doesn’t mean it like Louis has to go away.  All of his friends will be at school on Monday, as usual, as always.  With Louis, he never knows if he’ll see him again ever.

“I know,” Louis says, always more astute than he seems, sharp awareness cloaked behind sweeping declarations and nonsensical non sequiturs.  “You have your own boys, like mine.  I wish I could meet them.”

He doesn’t say it like he has any expectation that it will come true, even though Harry’s friends are heart-poundingly nearby.  But the two lives of Harry Styles can never, ever collide.  Louis seems to get that.  Harry doesn’t want his friends to steal away Louis, and he doesn’t want Louis to steal away his friends.  He wants everything for himself.  It’s his birthday, he should be allowed to be selfish.

“I missed you,” Harry blurts out, instead of explaining himself.  He might be growing as evasive as Louis, but he can never help his own inexorable honesty.

“I miss you even when I’m here,” Louis says, the way one might say “I took the bus to school today,” or “ _EastEnders_ is a good show.”  He doesn’t seem to be expecting or even looking for any particular response from Harry; instead, he looks down at the cat in his lap and smiles, scratching her behind the ear.  “What’s her name?” Louis asks.

“Eleanor.”

Louis quirks an eyebrow at him.  “You named your kitten after my fairy?”

“Yes,” Harry says.  “Do you think she’d like it?”

“She’d either like it or she’d hate it,” Louis says, petting the kitten, who purrs like she’s known Louis all her life.  It’s strange—Harry’s never seen her take to anyone so quickly, not even Harry at first.  She’s only just started tolerating Ed.  “Fairies don’t do anything halfway.”

“Neither do cats,” Harry says.  Louis laughs.

“C’mere,” he says, with a jerk of his head, a flick of his hair.  Harry goes, sits beside Louis, all pressed up against him from shoulder to toes.  Eleanor looks pleased and stretches herself out between the two of them.

“It’s your birthday again,” Louis says.

“Yeah,” Harry says, surprised.  “Well, barely.  Not anymore at midnight.  I didn’t think—”  He’s not quite sure how he means to finish that sentence.  He didn’t think Louis really understood what birthdays were?  He didn’t think Louis ever scheduled his visits purposefully?  He didn’t think Louis had any knowledge about the passage of time or the concept of years?  One of those.

“I can smell it on you,” Louis confides.  Harry wonders if he means all the trappings of a birthday party, the scent of cake frosting and blown-out candles and musty old tent, or the age itself, growing in him like a cancer.  He doesn’t answer, just tightens his hands on his knees.

“How do you feel?” Louis asks, like he’s genuinely curious.

“Older,” Harry says.  It’s the truth.  Usually he thinks aging happens so gradually that he never really notices it, so thirteen feels a lot like twelve, which felt a lot like eleven, until you realize thirteen feels nothing at all like ten did so something must have changed along the way.  This isn’t like that at all.  He feels the weight of age immediately, crushing down on his shoulders.

Louis sighs.

“It’s not your fault,” he says kindly, but Harry feels like it sort of is.  He’s afraid to ask how many birthdays he has left.  He used to be excited about them, but he’s starting to dread each passing year.  It’s probably the wrong attitude for a boy right in the midst of puberty to take, even if he is weathering it better than some of his friends, but he can’t seem to help it.

“What’s going on with you?” he asks, ever-eager for a subject change.

“The other Eleanor’s been kidnapped,” Louis says, conversationally.  “By pirates.  They’re getting back for the drowning thing with the mermaids and the gnomes.  They’re keeping her in a lantern with a tiny door she can’t open, and now I have to rescue her.”

Harry likes how he says “the other Eleanor” instead of just “Eleanor”.  It makes his cat seem important.  Still, the news doesn’t sound good.

“Shouldn’t you go do that then?”

“When I get back, I will.  She’s in terrible danger.”

“I thought you said it was fun all the time.”

Louis looks surprised, either at Harry or himself.  “It is fun.  What isn’t fun?  Fun can be danger and violence and realizing things might not ever be the same.”

It’s dangerous just being here, knowing they could be discovered any moment, that this strange fragile place they’ve carved out for themselves could be shattered and broken in an instant.  But he can’t say it’s not fun.  It’s harder to believe in Louis in the daytime, and sometimes trying to only feels exhausting.  He needs these moments, trapped in darkness.

“Why did you come back?” he asks.  He doesn’t know why he always seems to ask questions that could drive Louis away, or why he’s so desperate to get to the bottom of this when he fears having the answer will be a horrible disappointment.

“Escape.”

Louis smiles his secret smile, which Harry likes to imagine is just for him, even though he should know better.

“Escape from what?”

“Escape from you.  No,” he says, frowning, “That’s not right.  Escape to you.”

“Why me?”  Sometimes it feels like Louis is circling around all of Harry’s questions on purpose, a shark in the water waiting for the right one to be asked.  Or the wrong one.  Harry wonders if he’s like this with his lost boys, too.

“Because of your curly hair,” Louis says, but he doesn’t say it like it’s a joke.  He says it’s like the honest truth.  Eleanor rubs her face against Harry’s hand, an affirmation.

Harry decides to be brave.

“I’m glad you do come to see me,” he says, looking at Eleanor as he says it because he’s not _that_ brave, not yet.  “I wish you came more.”

“Quality over quantity, young Harold,” says Louis.  “Mind over matter.  Eggs over easy.  What time is it?”

“Um,” Harry says.  He cranes his neck to get a view of his alarm clock.  “Eleven fifty-eight.”

“Almost out of time then.  Tick-tock.  I have something for you.”

“You do?” Harry says, surprised.

“Of course I do, it’s your birthday.  Presents are all that makes them bearable.  Now close your eyes and hold out your hands.”

Harry does as he’s told, and also, for some reason, holds his breath.  It’s darker than it should be behind his closed eyelids, and also somehow quieter than it should be, with two boys and a purring cat inside the room and the window slightly open to the street below.  Nothing happens and nothing happens and nothing happens, and Harry begins to wonder if this has all been just a dream, and if it has, how long he’s been asleep.

Then Louis presses something into his hands, something round and firm and cool to the touch.  Harry opens his eyes.

“An apple,” he says, because that’s what it is.  An ordinary, run-of-the-mill apple, with absolutely no distinguishing features whatsoever except a slightly crooked stem.

“Yes!” Louis says, grinning madly and hugging Eleanor close.  She lets out an annoyed yowl but doesn’t stop purring either.

“An apple?”  Harry turns it into a question in case that will help it make sense.

“Yes,” Louis says again, lowering Eleanor back onto his lap, where she immediately resumes kneading his legs.  “Do you not have those here?”  His eyes are big and round and uncertain and sincere and so, so earnest it sort of makes Harry want to cry.  He feels a bit like he’s ruined everything and has to make it better.

“An apple,” he says again, biting into the word, tasting it, and then he laughs.  Of course it makes no sense.  Because _Louis_ makes no sense, he never will and he never has to, and that thought is oddly freeing to Harry.  Maybe _he’s_ the strange one, after all, for not expecting an apple in the first place.  He takes a large bite, and Louis beams.

“Thanks,” Harry says, once he’s swallowed, and means it.

“I’m glad you like it.  Is it still your birthday?”

Harry glances at the clock again, wiping the juice from his chin.  “No,” he says.  “Not anymore.  It’s midnight.”

“Good,” Louis says.  “Close your eyes again.”

And Louis kisses him.

It’s not Harry’s first kiss, but it almost feels like it, like this kiss is erasing the ones that came before, wiping his slate clean.  It’s not anything much, just a simple press of lips, and then Louis’ hand coming up to tangle in Harry’s curls, and Harry’s fingertips just brushing against Louis’ jaw, butterfly-soft.  Like the best proof Harry has that Louis is something tangible, something more than a late-night fever dream that always goes fuzzy around the edges.  And then Louis pulls away and it’s over, and Louis’ eyes are huge and dark and looking at him like Harry’s the first real thing he’s ever seen, and Harry thinks he could drown in them, in this, in the moonlight casting strange shadows in Louis’ hair.  He takes a deep breath in and can’t remember when he last did that.

Louis opens his mouth, and for the first time he seems as off-balance and off-kilter as Harry always feels around him, like he’s not sure what to do or where to look because it’s all too much and too confusing.  Harry thinks, randomly, of the crocodile Louis once told him had eaten a pocket watch, and of Eleanor-the-fairy trapped in a lantern, and then he thinks of Gemma’s too-loud-laugh on the phone next door and of poker games played in a tent and of Eleanor-the-cat’s still-empty water bowl. 

“Hazza,” Louis says, and it’s the first time he’s ever called Harry that but Harry likes it immediately, “I think—”

“Harry!”

The tent has been abandoned, the sanctuary broken, the house invaded.  There are five boys loudly tromping up the stairs to Harry’s room, and not a one of them is in any way lost, and not a one of them seems to have any consideration for Harry’s sleeping parents or Harry’s maybe-imaginary definitely-unaging Rumpelstiltskin-imitating habitually-breaking-and-entering secret nighttime visitor.

“Um,” Harry says, because he’s always been too slow to react to things, and his sister always said that would kill him one day and it looks like that day is today.

Louis’ hand has left Harry’s hair, maybe a while ago, Harry can’t remember, and is now yanking on the windowsill, tugging it up higher—wide enough to climb through.  Eleanor seems offended by Louis’ sudden flurry of activity, rising off his legs and stalking over to hop up on the bed instead, as Louis hops onto the window seat.  She settles down and glares in their direction, eyes bright in the darkness.  Harry wishes he were a cat, sometimes.

He looks at Louis, standing on the window seat dark and brave and marvelous, delightfully disarrayed and mysteriously bright, a hurricane in his bones, impish promise and wicked warning all at once.  He looks at the apple Louis gave him, with just the one bite missing, as though it got lost on its way to a stage production of _Snow White_.  And he doesn’t want Louis to leave.

“ _Wait_ ,” he says, urgent and needy.  The door opens with a _bang_ like a gunshot, startling him, and when he looks back at the window Louis is gone.

His friends are all talking at once, spreading across his room like a rowdy teenage infestation.  They look oddly like strangers, as though Harry hasn’t seen them in ages.

“What happened, mate?” Nick asks, vaulting himself onto the bed and earning a hiss from Eleanor, “You get lost in your own home?”

“Um,” Harry says, thinking instead of Louis’ home, with the mermaids who sometimes try to drown people they don’t like and the pirates who have kidnapped the other Eleanor as part of their mad quest for revenge.  He thinks of Louis’ lips pressed softly against Harry’s, the end of Harry’s fourteenth birthday, the blank stare of an empty window.  “No.  Not lost.”

“Well come along then, I’ve just decided I want more cake.  There’s still some in the kitchen, right?  I’ve gotten hungry kicking everybody’s arse at five-card draw.”

So Harry grips the apple tightly in his hand and goes with them, his friends: down the stairs (still none the quieter), through the kitchen, out the door, to the tent.  It doesn’t matter.  Louis will be back soon.  He’ll come back for Harry and they’ll—well, Harry doesn’t know what, but something will have changed.  Anything everything something.  They’re on the verge of something big, some earth-shaking upheaval, he can feel it.  He can feel the crumbling edge under his toes, the breathtaking nearness of a gulfing drop.  The other boys share the leftover cake in the tent, cards pushed off to the side, but Harry eats the apple down to its core.  He’s prepared to wait, and it won’t be long.  He’s sure of it.  He left the window open in his room, and his cat fast asleep on the bed.

 

A year and a half later, and Louis is sitting on top of Harry’s dresser, his feet in Harry’s sock drawer.

“Do you still have the apple I gave you?” he asks, without preamble.

“What?” Harry says.  His voice is lower, now, much lower, lower than anyone could have predicted.  People always act so surprised when they hear him talk.  He drops his schoolbag on the bed.  “No.”

“Something’s different,” Louis says, looking troubled.  “About your bedroom.  Something has changed, I can feel it.”

“It’s a _different room_ ,” Harry says, staring.  “How could you not have noticed that?  How did you even know which window to—where to come?”

“Different room, different _room_ …hmm.  No, I’m not sure that’s it.”

“ _I’m_ sure,” Harry says.  “This used to be the guest bedroom.  I switched last summer, ‘cause it’s bigger.  And has a telly.”

“I think it’s the moon,” Louis says decisively, completely ignoring Harry.  He crosses to the window.  “Where did the moon go?”

“It’s on the other side of the house.  You can’t see it from here.  Like I _said_ , it’s a different room.”

They’re standing very close together, now, with Louis peering out the window like he’s lost something important.  Louis looks exactly the same.  He always looks exactly the same.  It’s only Harry who changes any.  He is nearly as tall as Louis now, maybe not even half an inch shorter.  And he’s probably older, too, if that’s how it works, and isn’t that a new feeling?  He can’t think of anything to say.

“The shadows are all different,” Louis says, breath fogging the glass.

“Yeah, well,” says Harry.

“Where’s Eleanor?” Louis asks brightly, looking around, as though the strange new shadows might be concealing her.  “Eleanor the Cat, Eleanor the Mighty, Eleanor Slayer-of-Mice?”

“Out.”

“Out where?”

“Outside.”

This, Harry thinks, is where he jumps in with about a million questions that Louis will answer and avoid answering in the least helpful way possible.  He thinks it, but doesn’t register it, like he’s reading a map in another language.  There isn’t a window seat in this room, so he sits on the bed.  Louis faces him, cocky and sure, looking so exactly like he did when Harry first met him that for a moment Harry actually believes he’s eleven again.

“Excellent news, Curly.  The war is over.  The wait is finished.  The word is love.  I’ve come to take you away.”

He holds out his hand.  Harry looks at it.  He looks from it to Louis.

“What?” he says, uncomprehending.

“I’ve come to take you away.  To Neverland.  That’s what it’s called, you know, didn’t I never not tell you?”

“You want to take me with you,” Harry says slowly.  “To—Neverland.”  Louis nods, already impatient.

“Yes, yes, come _on_ , Harry, let’s go, come along, you have to come with me and be a lost boy with the others and go on adventures and never get any older—I said _come_ , so now come, there isn’t time to lose, there never is.”

There is a _yes_ hovering in the air between them, one breath away from being made tangible.  It is buzzing around in Harry’s brain, tingling in his fingertips, perched on the very tip of his tongue.  Everything he’s wanted since the first day he met Louis almost five years ago.  Of course he’ll go.  What would stop him?  Why wouldn’t he?

Louis stomps a foot, childish.  “Come _on_ , Curly, there isn’t any _time_.”

He sticks his hand out again, demanding, imperious, certain.  How can a hand be all that?  Harry stares at it and tries to puzzle out its meaning.  He thinks of what Louis is asking.

And suddenly, Harry gets angry.

“Who are you?” he asks sharply, looking Louis right in the eye.

Louis grins.

“Me?  I am youth, and joy, and a little bird breaking—”

“ _No_ ,” Harry interrupts.  “ _Who_ are you.  Not _what_.”

Louis stares at him, lost and confused.  “Is there a difference?”

“Of course there’s a difference.  Stop always trying to get out of answering my questions, and just tell me.”  He balls his hands into fists on his knees.  “Please.”

A pause.

“I’m me,” Louis answers at a venture, sounding uncertain of even that.  “You guessed my name when I first came, remember, only a little while ago.”

“ _Five years_ ,” says Harry.  “It’s been five years, that’s not ‘a little while.’  And I didn’t guess, I keep telling you.  I tried but I couldn’t.”

“Five years?”  Louis looks like he’s trying to fathom the extent of such a stretch of time but can’t quite manage.  “Well, time flies, I suppose.  I can’t remember who told me that.  It doesn’t matter.  Why should it matter?  It doesn’t matter, Curly.”

“ _Harry_ ,” Harry says.  “And it does matter.  It’s been over eighteen months since you were last here.  Can you even understand that?  That’s more than a year and a half.  That’s the longest you’ve ever been gone; I started to think you weren’t going to come back.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Louis says dismissively.  “I always come back.  I always have.  I always will.  Always always always, and nothing will ever change.  Have a little faith.  And trust.  And—what’s the third thing?  I can never quite remember.  Are you coming?”

“No,” Harry says.

Louis stares.

“Sorry?” he says.  He almost sounds normal, with that word, like just another friend of Harry’s asking him to repeat something, instead of some alien fairytale being.

“No, I’m not coming,” Harry says, and the words are a revelation even to himself.

Louis doesn’t say anything, just looks at Harry, long and lost.  Harry doesn’t suppose anyone has ever turned Louis down before.  He wonders if Liam or Zayn or Niall or any of the rest of them ever had a tent full of friends waiting for them to play poker in the backyard, or a cat, or a sister, when they left with Louis.  He doubts it.

“But it’s not even your birthday anymore,” Louis says at long last, and what does that even mean?  Nothing, beyond sounding oddly and uncomfortably like the truth.

“I’m not coming with you,” Harry repeats, but it’s stopped being a revelation, and has morphed into something more fragile and painful.  Something real.

“ _Hazza_ ,” Louis says, kneeling by the bed.  Louis touches his face, his cheek, his hair, his nose.  Like an explorer trying to map out an unknown terrain, to understand a strange beast.  It’s the nickname, though, more than the touch, that pierces Harry.

“You can’t,” Harry says, and stops.  He tries to collect himself, to clear away the dust storm of his swirling thoughts.  “You can’t _do_ this.  People are real.  People grow up.  You can’t just come and go as you please and not think of anybody but yourself.  This isn’t some game.  Not to me.  I haven’t even seen you for over a _year_.  And _now_ you want me to come away with you?  I don’t even know what this—who you—”

His voice floods with tears, and he has to stop.  He wipes his nose on his sleeve, takes deep, shuddery breaths.  People have always told him he’s too sensitive, too emotional, not what a teenage boy should be.  His mother says he wears his heart on his sleeve.  He’s always tried not to care but has never quite managed it, doesn’t really think he ever will.  Sometimes he feels an ocean boiling inside him, and sometimes he wishes he knew how to quiet his galloping runaway heart.

“I don’t understand,” Louis says in a tiny voice.  Harry only feels angrier, and rubs fiercely at his eyes to stop the burning.

“Why—why can’t you just be _normal_?  People can’t just be on holiday all the time, that’s not how it works.”

“I can.  It does for me.”

“ _Stop_ it,” Harry says, pulling away.  “I’m sick of you saying there’s not enough time when all there is is time and all you do is waste it.  I’m sick of asking all the questions and you not answering.  I’m sick of not knowing if you—whether you care at all or—why you do _anything_.  I just.  I don’t want to be confused anymore.”

“I want you to come with me,” Louis says, stubborn to the end, like maybe if he just keeps repeating himself Harry will understand.  Like _Harry’s_ the one being confusing now.

But Harry feels like he finally understands.  He can have everything, if he sacrifices everything he has.

Just right now, he’s had enough.

“Grow up,” he snaps, words like two sharp bullets, and Louis recoils instantly.  His shadow spreads across the carpet like a bloodstain.  They are two traitors in a darkened room, and it’s nearing midnight.

“You’re not coming, then,” Louis says, voice lower than Harry’s ever heard it.  Harry doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at him.

Louis opens the window.  Louis stands on the precipice.  Harry can’t help himself.

“We’re still on the second floor,” he says.  “You could die.”

It’s too dark to see for sure, but he thinks Louis smiles.  “Wouldn’t that be an adventure?” he says, and springs.  Harry turns around, not listening for a crash or thud that he knows won’t come, just stares at the unfamiliar wall, listens to the silence that occupies the room like a growling tiger.  It doesn’t feel like there’s an ocean inside him now.  He’s never in his life felt more like a human boy made out of flesh and bone and not much else.

He stays up all night every night for the next week, hovering in that fragile space between sleep and awake, the place where everything’s a little like dreaming.  He rubs his eyes and pinches his leg to keep from drifting off completely, night after night after night, but Louis doesn’t come back.  Eventually Harry stops waiting.

 

He’s sixteen, and summer holidays have ended again.  Out are the days of wild escapades and madcap adventure—attempting to form a band in Hadyn’s garage, gradually losing all their money to the ice cream truck that stopped by every day—and in are the days of waking up far too early to take exams he hasn’t studied for and trying to convince the administration that White Eskimo should be allowed to play at school assemblies.  Still, there’s something undeniably comforting about the familiarity of the first day of a new school year.  Harry walks the route to school, gives directions to three close-huddled boys who look a bit lost, and finds his first class of the day.

He makes it in just as the last bell rings, but nobody seems to notice.  The teacher is muttering darkly over some piece of technology that won’t work for him, the students are all drowning each other out in their enthusiasm to talk about what they did over summer hols, his friends have scoped out seats in the very back row and Nick is waving Harry over.  It’s all very standard, the absolute textbook definition of normalcy. 

Except.

There’s a new boy sitting at a desk, eyes bright and hair bronze in the sunlight filtering through the tall classroom windows.  He looks maybe sixteen, like Harry.  He’s curled in on himself a bit, a boy who doesn’t quite belong, the only student who doesn’t fit into a desk like he’s grown up in one.  He keeps glancing at the students around him, but he doesn’t talk to anyone.  He doesn’t seem scared, just—apprehensive.  But hopeful, too.  Like he’s not quite ready yet, a little bird breaking out of its shell.

He looks up as Harry approaches, smiles soft and easy; dawn breaking after a long cold night.

“Hi,” Harry says, starting to smile, too, something growing inside his chest, like a cat purring, like a bird taking flight.  “How was your holiday?”


End file.
